The Hour Season Two

Season Two of the BBC series The Hour has made its appearance on BBC America recently and having watched the first two episodes I feel compelled to give the series a huge positive rating.

So few shows are intelligent and compelling. We can find shows that intrigue us, Revolution, The Walking Dead, for example. We can find shows that are intelligent but rarely both. With it's nod to history and the assumption that we as viewers have a basic knowledge of it, The Hour is a superbly done show.

The first season centered on the personal relationships of the staff of a new British news show in the fifties. The British government is in the middle of the Suez Crisis, and Eisenhower is far from the most popular figure on the right side of the pond. The cast is led by Ben Whison as reporter Freddie Lyon, Dominic West as anchorman Hector Madden and Romola Garei as Bel Rowley.

Hector Madden is the stereotypical anchorman, portrayed as handsome, charming, and incredibly self indulgent and centered. Freddie Lyon as the young reporter and best friend, Boy Friday of the female lead, Producer Bel Rowley or Moneypenny as he calls her. Rowley has a face that one does not forget. She is not attractive in the modern women as stick way, and not in the over the type Jane in Mad Men crazy way, but in one of the most alluring ways I can recall. For me Rowley is not a woman to take your eyes off and her character in show is just as alluring. When one thinks of the woman she is portraying from that time period one must come to appreciate those women even more.

Along with the Suez Canal we have a second storyline involving a former acquaintance of Lyon who as Lyon looks into her death uncovers a Communist conspiracy.

Season two starts up nine months later, Freddie is gone after being fired, and Belle is carrying on. In the first two episodes Belle is producing away, with a new producer who is asserting more control than she likes, soon into episode one Freddie has returned from his travels and has been hired back. Bel is glad to have back, however she is perturbed by her not being consulted, and even more shocked by a surprise he unveils.

Hector, if anything, has moved further down the road of decadence and seems to be self destructing at a rapid rate, his wife moving from being constantly feeling abandoned to resolving to live her life next to him but not with him. As Season Two takes off Hector's self destruction moves at a rapid clip and embroils everybody in it's wake.

The news, the history, the backstory of Season Two is if anything is more interesting than the first, Britain has gained a Nuclear Bomb and the government is fear-mongering to move attention from a crime wave and with British censors being a constant antagonist as the producers struggle to air the stories they wish is continual.

Few shows you will watch can place you in a time period as well as The Hour. Mad Men at the beginning did so, as the show has moved into the mid sixties the efforts to place the characters in the historical time period have seem contrived and stilted while those same efforts in The Hour are seamless.

The cast is strong, intriguing, and not to be forgotten. Watching the British shows on PBS, these shows on the BBC America Wednesday night block one wonders if there is a reason that British network, not cable mind you, network television appears to be so strong in comparison to ours.

It is a question well worth asking. In the meantime this is not a show to be missed.

The President's Club by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy

This recently published book explores the relationships between the current and former Presidents in the modern age. Since Harry Truman was elected relationships between Presidents have become an integral part of the success of those in office. With modern medicine and many younger men being elected President we have scene at various times the President's Club grow to as many as six when Bill Clinton was President.

Harry Truman began the modern day President's club when he brought Herbert Hoover back into the service of the country. Hoover, an outcast in the FDR years, had been a hero long before his Presidency, his efforts in food relief and distribution in World War I made him an easy choice for Truman to use in saving Europe after the second war.

Not all relationships have been as smooth. Eisenhower and Truman had a terrible hand off and did not really make piece until Ike left office, and especially at the funeral of JFK.

JFK being young needed Eisenhower and Ike complied, offering advice and political cover after the Bay of Pigs.

LBJ embraced Truman and Eisenhower, Ike in fact at times was the bellicose voice in his ear over Vietnam.

For readers whose sense of history begins in the seventies Richard Nixon, as in all things, is as complex a character as one will find. While in office his thoughts to blackmail LBJ to keep him on the sidelines and out of public comment might have been the precursor to Watergate. The talk of breaking into The Brookings Institute is shown to have been to get some letters of Johnson's detailing his letters on the political nature of his bombing halt before the 1968 election. Of course we also see how Nixon's actions might well have met the level of treason as he interfered in the Paris peace talks during the 68 campaign.

Bill Clinton's relationships are perhaps the most affecting to one's spirit of what could be if politicians still worked together. Clinton took advice from the noted foreign policy expert Nixon and compared his death to the loss of his mother. Gerald Ford tried to help Clinton in his impeachment scandal, and while he could not keep the Republicans at bay Clinton never forgot his efforts. Of course the most interesting is Clinton's relationships with the Bush's. George Bush who has become his surrogate father and W who Clinton says one cannot help but like.

Clinton the consummate politician warned Gore and his fellow Democrats that underestimating Bush the second would be a mistake. Many have heard the joke W told about Clinton waking from one of his surgeries and being surrounded by his loved ones" Hillary, Chelsea, and my dad." He was not kidding. The relationship developed so far that when Bush the elder was honored at 87 at The Kennedy Center that Bill Clinton professed his belief that the elder " could do virtually no wrong in his eyes" and that he loved him. It is interesting to note that as the multitudes and generations of Bush's lined up for a family photo that Neil Bush shouted for Clinton " the brother from another mother" to join the picture. And he did. As Clinton said, "every family needs a black sheep."

This is just a small sampling of the book. It is an easy read and it is very interesting. For me the takeaway is simple. If Presidents when they leave the office hold the office above party and the country above party why can that not happen when they are in office and more importantly in Congress.

I have observed that politicians of both stripes start to seem more sensible after the campaign is over, after they no longer have to raise money and rouse the base. The question we have to ask ourselves is how do we get these sensible people to be the ones that are running. They " are " the ones running by the way in most cases, they just cannot be sensible and get elected.

We need to ask ourselves why.